Hittin' the Road for T-Giving

We are heading to Charlottesville for Thanksgiving this year, and will be cooking a vegetable feast. I am excited to see what kind of delicious produce my Aunt Mary has gathered for us.

This weekend, M and I will be toting our laptops, symbols of our newly acquired busy lives. There are a lot of things I swore I would never do again, and yet, here I am. For example, I swore I would never carry a travel mug again, since I never wanted to be too busy to eat a complete breakfast at home. But school starts awfully early for that principle to stand long. I also said I would never drive to work, which I am doing now. (Not for long, though, as I plan to make the 12 mile (each way) journey by bicycle starting next week.)

And then today I found myself sitting in traffic, after a very long day which involved many "time outs" and "sticks in the pockets" and even some tears (not my own), going to Ikea to get some curtains and the hardware to hang them up. I object to Ikea. I know that many of their products are made from recycled or renewable resources, such as bamboo. However, they turned furniture, once considered a craft, into a mass produced catalog of whatever-you-want-this-season.

Calm down...I am not judging you, lest I be judged. My visa card is not unknown in the land of Ikea. I have spent many a Saturday browsing, and I believe it might be impossible to leave that place empty handed.

But I freaked out this time. All of a sudden, I wanted to be out of that store, out of the vast confusion of Robinson Town Center, away from highways and detours and traffic. I was thoroughly disgusted for wanting curtains (we have mini-blinds, so it's purely for aesthetics). I was thoroughly disgusted for taking a job I was unsure about for the purpose of having enough money to afford interior decorating. I missed the woods and my hiker friends, and the pleasureable feeling of waking up ready to face the day. I missed life without email and cell phones and Google calendar. And I was sick and tired of listening to people, including myself, fret all day and into the evening about various things that are not fret-worthy.

Poor M. He thought I was mad about the curtain hanging hardware that he had picked out after painstakingly measuring every crooked and irregular window in the apartment.

It will be good to get out of town for a few days.

By the way, once I got home, I discovered that the curtain hanging hardware does NOT include the mounting screws, so we will have to go to Home Depot anyway.